Bella Vista's Shope spent many years in disaster relief

Rachel Dickerson/The Weekly Vista Hal Shope worked 20 years with Lutheran Disaster Response. He also had several different jobs leading up to his time with the organization.
Rachel Dickerson/The Weekly Vista Hal Shope worked 20 years with Lutheran Disaster Response. He also had several different jobs leading up to his time with the organization.

BELLA VISTA -- Hal Shope of Bella Vista had several different jobs during his career that culminated in 20 years working in disaster relief.

He grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and attended a large high school where the vice principal encouraged him to go to her alma mater, Oberlin. He went there on an academic scholarship and was the first in his family to go to college. After college, he started working for Proctor and Gamble in sales management. That job took him to Rochester, N.Y., and then to New Jersey as Eastern Division manager. He said the next stop was Cincinnati, the home office, but he liked being in the field, so he left the company.

He and a partner opened an antique store in Oshkosh, Wis. He said the first year he was there it was -60 degrees with wind chill on Super Bowl Sunday, and he decided the weather was too cold for him, so he moved to Arkansas.

"It was like I was in the witness protection program or something. Every time I turned around, I was changing jobs," he said.

He joined a radio station in Little Rock as a sales representative and became general manager. The station went from last place to first place, he said. The owner bought a station in Tulsa and said he was sending Shope there, but Shope wanted to stay in Arkansas. The two of them had a disagreement, and Shope quit the job. He got a job at an AM country station in Protho Junction, and it was purchased by Shamrock Broadcasting, which was owned by members of the Disney family. During that time, he interviewed Willie Nelson, George Jones and Tammy Wynette. He had lunch with Barry Manilow and Lady Flash, he said.

When Disney sold the radio station and wanted him to move to St. Louis, he wanted to stay in Little Rock. He started working for an oil company as sales manager. One day he and the owner's son were at the state fair selling bulk oil tanks to farmers. The owner's son disappeared for a couple of hours and, when he returned, he had joined the Navy and said he did not know how he was going to break the news to his father. Shope said the father lost interest in the company after his only son left, and the company went nowhere. Shope then joined a concrete company and later opened his own Primerica business.

In 1997 a major tornado struck and Shope's pastor suggested he might want to help with disaster relief. Lutheran Disaster Response was having a meeting, and after talking with the organizers, they asked him to join them for two months. Twenty years later, he was still with Lutheran Disaster response.

During the 1997 tornado response, he reached out to all the people who needed help. The Zotti family's house had been destroyed, but they had insurance, so they just needed the debris cleared. Then suddenly, the husband died. Shope arranged to have the debris cleared. A year later, he married Dr. Marianne Zotti.

Zotti, who has a doctorate in public health, received an offer from the Centers for Disease Control to start an outreach program in Mississippi. Shope said he would be willing to move there. However, then a tornado hit Saline County and it delayed their plans. He stayed in Arkansas for a year while she moved to Jackson, Miss., and they would meet halfway on the weekends in Lake Village. At the end of the year he moved to Jackson.

Shope got a job offer with the governor's office in Mississippi with the Children's Health Insurance Program. He was there almost six years while also running the Lutheran Disaster Response in Mississippi.

"It was kind of a calling that I had to work with them," he said.

Zotti wrote a book, All Things New, to help her manage the trauma of the tornado. The couple started All Things New Ministry. They wanted to help youth, so they wrote a curriculum for children and teens and started teaching it at youth groups and Boys and Girls Clubs. The curriculum taught what to do in disasters. They received a large grant and taught the curriculum in nine states and wherever there was a disaster, including Puerto Rico.

On the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, they were invited to Manhattan to talk to survivors and see Ground Zero.

"That was an experience for us," he said.

Ten years ago, Shope went through his most difficult challenge when his eldest son died. He has four living children, and Zotti has three.

The couple had been living in Bella Vista for eight years when, in 2019, they decided to move to a townhome at Concordia because Shope's eyesight was failing. He said they like it there and that there are all kinds of interesting people.

The couple still does consulting work for disaster relief.

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